Zana and Carlo Izzo

    Sat, 8 Jun 1996 16:59:49 +0200 (MET DST)

   Dear all,

    I never had any sort of awakening: apparently I am unable to "let go", maybe I am too rational, rigid and immature. Nevertheless I am *sure* that life has a Meaning, a Meaning that goes beyond life itself. Nothing can exist for no reason: consciousness exists because there is a reason for it. I imagine a universe made of space, time, mass/energy and consciousness, all interconnected and eternal. Maybe too rational, I admit (I studied physics and astronomy, alas...). Oh, yes, and I am 37, Italian, very slim - what else? - quite nervous, impatient, sometimes very depressed, other times very high.

    On the other side my wife, Zana, is exactly the opposite of what I am. She is sweet, calm, polite - sometimes screams like a mad, alright - she hates computers, she hates machines, she even hates to type (that's why I am typing for her) - but she enjoys reading your messages. She was quite happy to join your list.

    She is 33, extremely beautiful ;-) , Croatian, not tall, a "pocket Venus" (yes, yes, I am so happy to be married with her).

    She was always interested in Buddhism, and meditation, and she tells me all about it - and I surprisingly agree with most of what she says (even if I refuse to do meditation because I have a terrible feeling of wasting my time). I guess I agree because I am still in love with her... :-)

    We have also a beautiful-marvelous-fantastic 5 years old boy.

    You can see our pictures at

    http://www.rosat.mpe-garching.mpg.de/~izzo/english.html

    Anyway, one cold winter day, a year and a half ago, she came back home from a walk in the snow with our kid (I was watching TV because I hate cold), and she went straight to bed because she was tired and felt very very cold. And she was anxious to try a meditation technique meant to warm up her body (I suspect that she got so cold on purpose). She began from her left hand, and indeed it warmed up very quickly. Then she continued with her right hand, then the feet - and suddenly she felt a sort of "energy" coming to life between her stomach and her belly that began to rise quickly, and rise, as drawn by a "magnet" (she says), or like a fluid sucked up by a syringe, till it quickly reached the top of her head - she was in horror, and she was about to stop all that by simply jumping out of the bed, but she decided to sit tight, and wait, and see - and when this "energy" reached her head her "consciousness" (or her "self"?) "collapsed into a single, bright point of lucid awareness", and she was suddenly insensitive to her own body (she gets almost hysterical when she tells this part of the story - practically to everybody invited to dinner - she is also an extremely good cook, by the way). She doesn't know how long she remained in this state - not much anyway: she went out of bed and she came running to me and my stupid TV. She was out of herself, laughing, crying, etcetera. She started to tell me that "something incredible" happened to her, and she explained - all the words mixed up - what happened, and I tryed to understand...

    You have to understand that I trust my wife very much, because I know how serious - even skeptical! - she is, after all, so I listened carefully, and then asked questions, and then tryed to comfort her...

    The day after she found on her books some descriptions that seemed to match somehow her own experience: "It must be kundalini," she explained to me. I nodded, feeling completely lost of course. I know only physics, and nothing about mysterious bioenergies running back and forth your body...

    Next she grabbed the telephone, and began to call virtually all the centers for meditation in the town of Munich (Germany). Everybody she talked with confirmed that this was a case of spontaneous awakening of kundalini energy. Most of them told her it could be a dangerous thing, if run out of control, some told her that this may lead to crazyness. She got scared. I got scared. I felt as if somebody explained to me that my wife was able to talk to E.T. with the power of her mind, and alien ships would come to grab her and take her to Betelgeuse. The main point was that she was no longer able to stop a sort of "circulation" of this "pressure" in her body. She began to wonder whether she got actually a brain cancer. Therefore she went to a physician - he smiled, submitted her to EEG - and ruled brain cancer out.

    Initially, this circulation of kundalini energy in her body was quite annoying - even scary - for her.

    After some months, Zana grew finally convinced that that was really kundalini. In the first few months it was enough for her to sit on a chair, or on the sofa, or in the car, or to lay in bed, for the "energies" (as she calls them) to begin to "circulate" spontaneously in her body. She couldn't stop them, she couldn't help it. Her mouth half open, her eyes gazing in front of her - and I know for sure that she "has the energies". Currently she just learned not to *try* to control them, accepting to *follow* them. She describes it as if these "energies" are "evolving", and all she can do is to follow them. It's no longer troublesome. She even began to make experiments, as putting her hands around my head when I have migrane - in order to see whether she can heal me - but till now the experiment was always disturbed by the fact that I cannot wait and I always get a coffee and an aspirin. The headache goes away alright, but we cannot say whether it's for the aspirin I took or for her "energies". I mean, we are not taking this too seriously - we are just playing like children. Anyway, apparently Mattia (our 5 years old son) is quite sensitive to this treatment: she was able to make some strong pain to his left ear to disappear in minutes. But maybe any mother is able to perform such "miracles" to her own beloved child. Mother's love is such a powerful thing, and the placebo effect may be very strong in such a situation (am I too rational?).

    That's it, for the moment. For further details, you may send questions - and we will answer as soon as possible. Our question is: what to do, now? That is, what one should do, once his/her kundalini is awakened?

    Ciao, Carlo and Zana
izzo@rosat.mpe-garching.mpg.de

    Mon, 10 Jun 1996 09:41:07 +0200 (MET DST)
   From: Carlo Izzo
Subject: So much heart energy

    >
> I also want to say to Carlo and any other husbands, wives, partners and loyal
> friends of those of us going through awakening: DO NOT UNDERESTIMATE YOUR OWN > SPIRITUAL BEAUTY!!!

    Dear El, actually I am not such a good person, and I have to confess that I am a bit jealous of this kundalini thing that my wife can feel and I can't. I have also little hope to awake my own kundalini: I am probably too nervous, impatient, etc (as I already mentioned). Sometimes I have the feeling I am more an obstacle than a help to Zana: when she flies too high, I find myself trying to carry her back to the ground. We have some heated discussion, at times, even if eventually we find that we agree on the essentials. To give you an example, I hate when she begins to throw coins to get advice with the I Ching. But later in the night, while I am alone, I sit on the floor and throw the coins myself...

    We both agree that the I Ching is "just" one out of many way to access the beauty and the harmony of some ancient wisdom.

    > Just because you are not the "identified target" of the
> risen Kundalini does not in any way mean you are not equally involved in
> profound spiritual growth.

    I do hope so... otherwise my life would have no reason to be. Actually, sometimes I think that I understand a lot - even if I do not meditate and did not experience kundalini awakening. On the other side, quite often I feel miserable, frustrated, angry - and useless.

    I am personally more and more happy to have joined this list. I especially like your messages, El: I don't know exactly why, but what you write sounds very _right_ to me. And you sound so calm, joyful and in peace with yourself and others...

    Also, you seem very reasonable - a fundamental thing for me! ;-)

    Ciao, Carlo

Zana

    Tue, 18 Jun 1996 22:19:12 +0200 (MET DST)

    Dear listeners,

    till now it was my husband, Carlo, to tell you what I told him, but now I want to say with my own words what I think is more important. More than kundalini itself, I think we should consider what lead us to experience the kundalini awakening. In my earlier life I wanted all my dreams, my desires, to become true. Sometimes my wishes were fulfilled, sometimes not. And sometimes I found that what I wished was not as good as I expected. On the other side, those things I was trying to avoid, were giving me more from the point of view of learning and increase my consciousness.

    One day - I still remember this day - I made a oath to myself: in my life I want Truth. And this Truth should not depend on my own desires, on what I like or dislike. I wanted to let myself to reach the Truth. Since then, something began to move. I began to meditate, not in the sense of staying still, but in a sort of awareness on anything I was doing at the moment, in my everyday life. This helped me in understanding that sentence, from a famous Zen story: "Empty your cup, if you want to fill it with something different". I think this is the most fundamental part: maybe boring and tedious, but it allows to rise your consciousness.

    I was meditating mainly about the ego and the self. And here I think that I have found something: that the ego is necessary for the discovery of the self. The ego is not there for no reason. The self is, in my opinion, our true nature, while ego is the product of all our wordly experiences, the things we learned, the things we did. Now, without a conscious, rational mental process, we cannot become aware of the self. Only when we become aware of the self we can let ourselves let to the self. One day it happened to me to meditate on love and trust. For a few seconds I became aware of what I would call the self, that power that cannot ever fail, is always right. Something that was not around me, but *inside* of me. It is not something external that you may pray, or invoke: it was inside of me. And this lasted just a few seconds, and what I am writing now is just what I remember. After this happened, I enjoyed a period while I felt very calm and relaxed. And next, a week after, I had my kundalini awakening (at the time I didn't even know what kundalini was).

    I think that it is not so much important to try to awake kundalini by mean of special practices, training or meditation techniques, but it is very important to try to become aware of the meaning of all the common things we do every day. It's as if our problems are exactly what we need in order to improve our mind: we should not neglect them.

    Richard, thank you for this list. If you find it interesting, you may add this to the description of my awakening in your kundalini home page.